i spent a few hours yesterday on this and gotten it working 9999x better with a few minor changes
check it out
http://www.ladyada.net/make/xbee/arduino.html
please post bugs/successes to the ladyada.net forum thread because its tough for me to keep track of multiple forums these days
http://forums.ladyada.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=8222